Tyrant rush

[Pat AfterMoon]

Yesterday I have experienced a good game while playing human. At the start of the battle, the aliens were very agressives, a lot of dretch were attacking our base. Of course, a lot them die under the fire of the turrets and our guns. The game has rapidly evolved to stage 2, then battlesuit, Tesla ... etc.
At this stage a lot of aliens continue to attack with the dretch form. The humans has started to be more offensive with some raid on the other side of the map.
Sincerely, at this time I was thinking that the aliens team was really less skilled than us, I was wrong. Suddenly the waves of dretch were replaced by tyrants, in half a minute 4 tyrant were in our base, destroying the armory, the turrets, then clean it all.

I was really bluffed, nice game, congrat to the aliens !

[[db@]Megabite]

It is the most effective way to play for aliens against strong humans: Try to survive and hoard some points until stage three and then rush with tyrants.

Against weak humans with no or no skilled constructor it even works with some coordinated dragoons!

If the humans don't succeed in beating coordinated aliens before they reach stage three, they don't have a real chance to win. They may get a draw by effectively defending the base, but that's it.

Cheers, Danny

[Howitzer]

That's practicly ALWAYS how it goes.
All the humans think 'We own them ,we kill them so much they can't evolve'
I always yell around to destroy their base as fast as possible and not camp at base waiting for the dretches.
Because after a while, a good part of the dretches will have enough points to become a tyrant.
When you have 4 to 5 tyrants raiding your base at once.. It's over :p

[Silverius]

Humans in general need to stay near base to get kills to s2 and to delay aliens in the arms race. When s2 is reached it's a good idea to reloc the base to where tyrants can't follow or alternatively to move the base forward.

Yesterday I played in a team that moved the base practically into the enemies base. Even though they got tyrants in they end it did them no good (the tesla pairs near their exits helped too).

[mindfray]

I have been a witness to a tyrant rush today. It was not a pretty sight. At one point i thought it was going to be a draw but then tyrants came in about 3 at a time, allmoast an undless looping wave of them.

I would like to ask some of the more seasond Trem players about some strategies that are usefull in dealing with that neverending rush of big grimacing death.

but i have not really seen a single time that the human side has won against anything more than 2 tyrants rushing the base.

Could tyrants be a bit over powered?

[Silverius]

The trick with tyrants is not to let them to your soft spots. A tighly build base in a cramped space can help a lot. Controlling your access paths is also good. Even the best tyrant will have difficulties when the only paths in are guarded by two tesla's which are being continuously repaired.

Also remember that aliens can't keep up a tyrant rush if they are killed. So if you can shoot them in the back when they retreat things become a tad easier.

[[db@]Megabite]

Could tyrants be a bit over powered?

Yes and no. You have 400HP and do quite some damage. But you do not have range!

The key ist speed. As it was said earlier, as humans you have to camp and get cash and kills fast without many casualties. At stage two you have to switch to offense and beat the aliens before they reach stage three.
All you can do when they reach stage three is a fast switch back to defense! You can effectively defend your base with 3+ battlesuits (pulse/lucifer) against up to 4 tyrants. You need some teslas and a good builder, too, of course!
Nobody should go out of the base at that point... giving the aliens no more easy kills will drain their points and their ability to go tyrant. With some coordination you may even get back to offense, but going for a draw is your best chance at that point.

Cheers, Danny

[Catalyc]

The Tyrant is big and mostly slow. Easy target to hit. It also has a pretty long primary attack range (for a melee attack).

There are several ways to kill big aliens that attack your base, one of them is to slip behind them while they are attacking turrets with a Painsaw or another weapon that does a lot of damage, they get stuck and can't backpedal, in this moment team support is vital. You can probably take down an unexperienced alien player on your own, but the good players notice how their health goes down quickly, your teams job is to kill him before he kills you. If the tyrant gets to pass by the blocking player, he must be chased outside by 3-4 marines (at least 2 of em with decent armour) Lasgun or Mass Driver are excellent weapons to kill big aliens on the run, Pulse/L.Cannon is good if they're attacking, but to chase its better to use hitscan weapons. Always expect to find more resistance along the way, I can't count how many times I've chased a dying Tyrant or Dragoon and end up getting killed by another alien, this is why team support is very important.

The best 'strategy' for stale end games is to starve the other team at all costs, this means to kill the better players without feeding them any kills, its quite a challenge when its a tyrant, but it can be done. An alien player can have 9 evolution points, and he looses 5 to evolve to tyrant, if he doesn't get any kills and dies, he'll have to go Adv Dragoon and get 2 kills or more, or stay dretch and get 1 kill. Note that not feeding doesn't mean sit and hug a turret... You have to chase the dying aliens. If you don't have enough credits to at least buy armour+helmet you can always grab a ckit and help mantain the defenses.

People also have to understand that going out with only light armour is one of the worst possible ideas unless you are chasing, and even then you'd need support from people with better armour and weapons. A Tyrant can kill light armour on a single slash, so to handle 5 humans in light armour isn't really a problem for the better alien players.

After killing a few big aliens you'll start noticing that the players using a Tyrant a while ago are now dying as dretches, at this moment your team ussually have enough credits to pull off a good attack. (check out in the Strategy Guide the Base Raid post by juice).

Note that this strategy applies more or less to aliens as well. After Humans get flamers its better to stay off them untill you have a Marauder or better, also, if you have a small class its better to stick to walls and get away from the big aliens, since you can get them killed by blocking them, if theres a Bsuit and a Dragoon trying to attack him while you're a dretch, stay away and try not to block the Dragoons pounce.
Starving the other team pretty much works for both teams.

[Norfenstein]

Humans are really very simple. You have guns and you can switch between shooting and building at will. These two things alone make humans better than aliens. The key at any point in the game is TEAMWORK. With long range weapons you and several teammates can concentrate your fire on a single target whereas aliens actually get in each others' way when they try to attack together. Three humans with lasguns can kill a tyrant in 3 seconds.

This "camp until stage 2," "go back to camping at stage 3" stuff is nonsense. If you always always travel in groups then you won't be killed nearly as often as you'll kill aliens, which means you'll always have the stage and credit advantage. Unless your team is already overwhelmed you have no excuse for staying in your base.

Tremulous is game of momentum. You should only ever defend your base when the other team has it and is using it. Otherwise attack, attack, attack. If you force the aliens to defend their base right from the start your turrets may never fire a shot the whole game.

(Besides, a solidly built human base is nigh impossible for a fatass tyrant to punch through provided someone actual repairs the turrets. At that point the lower classes are much more dangerous. Obviously some maps are better than others, but as a rule of thumb the default location is terrible. And trying to relocate at stage 2 or really any time after the first five minutes is crazy.)

[Silverius]

Actually there are two good reasons to reloc at stage 2: repeaters and jetpack. Repeaters mean you can slowly move your base, very useful for moving it forward. Jetpack means you can move your base up (which in some maps can make your base petty tyrant resistant).

[b0rsuk]

I think the best combination against tyrants is:
Battlesuit/Chaingun + Jetpack/Mass Driver. Big tyrants are very easy to hit. Possibly some flamers, too, but they may not be very cost effective against big melee alien.

By the way...

Does anyone have detailed weapon stats ? Damage, rate of fire, clip capacity, spread(accuracy).... ? What weapons have highest damage per second against big/easy targets like tyrants ?

[Snarboo]

I'm also interested in detailed weapon and damage stats without having to crack open the code.

[Nemo]

I think the best combination against tyrants is:
Battlesuit/Chaingun + Jetpack/Mass Driver. Big tyrants are very easy to hit. Possibly some flamers, too, but they may not be very cost effective against big melee alien.

By the way...

Does anyone have detailed weapon stats ? Damage, rate of fire, clip capacity, spread(accuracy).... ? What weapons have highest damage per second against big/easy targets like tyrants ?

Take a look at the trem source-code: /src/game/tremulous.h . There are all damages and speeds, costs, etc. Interpretation of those values is your business  :lol:

Gr33tz, Nemo

[Moofed]

For the utterly lazy:
http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/trunk/src/game/tremulous.h?rev=754&view=markup

[[db@]Megabite]

This "camp until stage 2," "go back to camping at stage 3" stuff is nonsense. If you always always travel in groups then you won't be killed nearly as often as you'll kill aliens, which means you'll always have the stage and credit advantage. Unless your team is already overwhelmed you have no excuse for staying in your base.

Against stage 2 aliens it is already hard to get aliens into defense. If your granger is good, your eggs are located around the map and rebuild as fast as destroyed. You cannot hold up the offense while effectively defending the base. Against turrets usually 2 Dragoons work, Tesla may require more. Once the human base has 3 big bugs in and no defenders you are game over.
Travelling in groups sometimes is quite funny, even for aliens... attacking 3 light armoured humans with 3 dretches works better than attacking one alone...

My earlier talk about humans switching to defense in alien stage three does make sense. Otherwise you may soon find yourself out of spawns... rushing any undefended base (turrets and teslas play no role) with 4 tyrants will leave humans without a base in about 20 seconds. So I just suggest to be carefull and have a look at your own base at the first sighting of a tyrant...  

Maybe I am just blinded by (nearly) always playing in a team with ts and a capable granger...

Cheers, Danny

[Norfenstein]

Megabite"]You cannot hold up the offense while effectively defending the base...

...rushing any undefended base (turrets and teslas play no role) with 4 tyrants will leave humans without a base in about 20 seconds. So I just suggest to be carefull and have a look at your own base at the first sighting of a tyrant...

This exactly what I meant by momentum. An alien team with 4 tyrants attacking your base is a situation where humans do not have the initiative. In this case they should defend until the aliens run out of steam. When that happens humans need to immediately move to the offensive. It's alright in big games to have one or a few players stay in the base all the time to warn the rest when a major attack is happening, but other than that you should never be trying to both "hold up the offense while ... defending the base." One or the other, the difficulty is in sensing which is appropriate and when that changes.

[kozak6]

For the utterly lazy:
http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/trunk/src/game/tremulous.h?rev=754&view=markup

Thanks.  How can I extract a rate of fire from that?

[[db@]Megabite]

Well Norfenstein, I think we basically have the same opinion on that...

[Nemo]

For the utterly lazy:
http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/trunk/src/game/tremulous.h?rev=754&view=markup

Thanks.  How can I extract a rate of fire from that?

Rate of fire / sec = 1000 / <Weaponabbr>_REPEAT,

where Weaponabbr means the (may abbreviated) name of the gun, f. e., the lucifer cannon becomes LCANNON_REPEAT.

Gr33tz, Nemo

[minisori]

I think the best way to kill tyrants it's to dance with them lollll and chase them till dead.. when they run away it's cause they are seriusly damaged.

Another thing is that human bases start points are really bad for defense, sometimes change it from spot can make the difference.

We have a really nice match of about 120 mins yesterday smashing tyrants and destroying their base like 5 times (222 kills )... of course all was over when the anoying nexterholland come...

[Tatical]

Well tbh Tyrants are strong and can wack your base around if they can,the best thing on most maps (if u can) is to place the base at a high point i.e Elevator room with its high lvls when the tyrants rush in the room,the higher lvls are to high for them to get to and they cant take multiple hits for to long.

As already said if u travel in groups the tyrants will find them selves running away from gun fire.

And again as already stated this game is about teamwork ive seen countless games where the humans go solo,do that and u might aswell have a target on your head reading "eat me".

Alot of tyrants will wait around the corner (same as most aliens ) so try to be aleart when turning.


By no means am i an expert i havnt been playing to long but this is just from my experiance.

[Lava Croft]

Tyrants? Are those the big aliens which I usually find at the business end of my Mass Driver?

[Sandy]

Ok, if the aliens have 4 tyrants you have already lost unless they are crap/you are good.

Humans generally always stage up faster, its up to the humans to eradicate the aliens before they reach stage 3. Its definately possible, you just need to keep together and not 'rambo'.

[Tatical]

Tyrants can be taken down even if the group consist of people with a rifle.. when they charge at you jump sideways keep dodging they'll soon run ^^

[Tweed]

It's already been said that the main idea is to shut the aliens down before they reach stage 3. Stage 2 for aliens is very very "meh" while human's stage 2 nets them some superior firepower. However, most human teams seem content to camp in their bases untill the aliens have what they need to crush the base, so despite that fact that there's this big blazing window of opertounity to end the game, they just sit there.

A fully charged lucy will knock a tyrant down past half their health, but you have to hit them with it first. Also, poor base construction makes it a lot easier for tyrants to wreck the base, going right for the reactor and then moving onto everything else.

[Trainmaster]

True. Stage 2 is not really helpful for Aliens while Humans become stronger. And it often happens that humans reach stage 3 before aliens do. Then it's always a hard fight to get the last kills for Tyrants. Mostly humans gonna lose then  :lol:

[[db@]Megabite]

I played a nice game with humans tonight. The base was moved right at the start, reactor an spawns to a safe height.
The floor was trapped with turrets (later on teslas) and equipped with armory, health and repeater.
The moment the first Tyrant was spotted, all rushed back to the base. 20 seconds later 3 Tyrants rushed in and got blasted by teslas, lucifers and pulse rifles in mere seconds. We waited for the second wave, destroyed it and got back to offense. We nearly wiped them out, but the granger was good, always hiding some eggs!
Aliens got back to effense 2 times more, humans fast switching to defense again and deflecting them. It was a tight game, draw after 60 minutes!

Cheers, Danny

[Arcozelo]

The only time I've seen aliens reach stage 3 and not overrun a human base was
1. There were 4 human players and 2 alien players. 2 tyrants against 4 players in a base is too tough. As soon as a 3rd player got in they were squished.
2. (My favored tactic as human) The human base got relocated to an unacessible place. If you can only get there with a jetpack, then it's tyrant-resistant.

Of course, if you're gonna play the aliens, you might as well roleplay it well and be sneaky and deceiving. As most of you put it, some humans defending the base can pretty well defeat tyrant rushes, so the best tactic for a smart alien team is to lay off their base, hide as dretch somewhere near their base (where you can use your alien sense to see how many people are defending without going into their line of sight), let them think they have depleted the aliens' ev points and have them counterattack.
As soon as they have 2 or 3 battlesuits prowling the neighbourhood for your overmind, everyone evolves into tyrant and wipes out their base. By the time the suits come back to base, there'll only be fire and smoke left.

[Tatical]

Well today i played and found out Tyrants have more then one weakness infact in some maps its anti-tyrant.

I had found myself running from tyrants solo,when i crouched under the stairs and the tyrants were to big to melee me the dragoons couldnt melee me and i died when i go sniped.

So if u crouch under somthing Tyrants are usless and get to high Tyrants are usless.

Groups can take a tyrant out.

So all in all a well balanced co-op team can easily wipe any tyrants out